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Police Briefs 10-05-2011

A High Street man is being charged with attempted murder after allegedly nearly choking his girlfriend to death in their home last Sunday morning.

Police arrived at the home around 4 a.m. and found the woman alone in the home, but absolutely distraught. She had bruises and scrapes all over her arms, face and throat. She was noticeably limping.

Once calm, she told police that her boyfriend had come home intoxicated and began to fight with her.

At some point during the argument in their bedroom, the man pushed the victim onto the bed and then held her down. He allegedly called her all sorts of obscenities and then grabbed her by the neck.

At one point, he allegedly showed her a firearm.

He strangled her and called her more obscene names, but she was able to kick him in the leg and free herself.

However, the man was able to get a hold of her again and strangled her until she blacked out.

She told police that her vision became fuzzy and everything got quiet, and she didn’t know why he stopped choking her because she had passed out. The next thing she knew she was in the closet on the phone with police.

The man had fled the scene shortly after, but police were very familiar with him from previous incidents. He has a record of approximately 40 arraignments in court as an adult.

Around 6:15 a.m., police found the man in his motor vehicle on Cushman Avenue.

He was stopped and immediately arrested.

Christopher Ralph Penta Jr., 42, of 96 High St., was charged with assault with intent to murder and assault and battery (two counts).

Major drug bust

The Revere Drug Unit, the State Police and the Attorney General’s Office announced a major drug organization take-down last Thursday.

The operation was based in the North End, allegedly under the direction of Gerald Esposito, 40, of the North End, but it operated extensively in Revere at Esposito’s girlfriend’s apartment, Kettia Piris.

Eleven people were indicted in connection with the organization last week, including five Revere residents.

The major organization is accused of sell large quantities of cocaine, OxyCodone, marijuana and a number of other pills.

The investigation began in March and focused on a network of Esposito’s wholesalers, partners and customers.

In June, action on the case began when the Revere Drug Unit executed a search warrant at a Proctor Avenue home, seizing more than 300 grams of cocaine at that time.

A special Grand Jury in Suffolk Superior Court returned indictments on Sept. 15th and most defendants were arraigned last week. They are due in court on Nov. 3.

The Revere residents included:

• Steven Tracia, 55 , of 247 Proctor Ave.

• Marino Velasquez, 51, of 545 Malden St.

• Kettia Piris, 23, of Revere.

• Anthony Giannetti, 33, of 40B Tudor St.

• Ferdinando Daniele, 64, of 138 Mountain Ave.

Major drug bust

Two Ocean Avenue men held off an unknown intruder last Saturday morning after he had walked into their apartment and punched one of them while he slept.

The intruder, a North Korean man who was intoxicated and lost, couldn’t speak a lick of English.

No one knew what he was doing in the apartment or why he had punched one of the men.

When police arrived, one of the men was holding the intruder hostage by keeping him locked out on the balcony of their 10th floor apartment.

Officers intervened and went to the small balcony to take the man into custody. He fought valiantly, but officers were in no mood to wrestle around 10 floors above the ground.

He was quickly subdued.

Both men told police that they had been asleep when, around 6 a.m., the North Korean man entered the apartment and went to one of the bedrooms. Once there, he began punching one victim in the face several times.

The second man heard the commotion and ran into the room. Together, the victims forced the intruder onto the balcony and locked him out.

Then they called police.

They emphatically stated they had no idea who he was.

After investigating the man’s backpack, police were able to use a cell phone to call the man’s sister. She was able to translate and figure out the situation.

The man was a student in Massachusetts and originally from North Korea.

He was apparently hanging out with friends at the Wonderland Station, and later went to a party in the Ocean Avenue building.

During the party, he left to smoke a cigarette.

However, he forgot how to get back to the party and accidentally went into the wrong apartment.

He said he couldn’t remember how he got into the apartment or what he did once he was inside.

Taesoon Chang, 25, of Cambridge, was charged with assault and battery, breaking and entering in the day with intent to commit a misdemeanor and resisting arrest.

Selling drugs from a pharmacy is one thing, but selling drugs while working at a pharmacy is a whole other story.

A Rite Aid employee was summonsed to Chelsea District Court last Friday after having been discovered selling illegal drugs to customers while working as a clerk at the Broadway store.

The man was observed on surveillance video making a hand-to-hand drug sale around 5:45 p.m. last Friday, and was immediately called into the office. Police were called to the scene and the man was interviewed.

He told them quite frankly that he had been selling drugs in the store and actually had drugs on him.

Police found two bags of reefer and some cash on him.

He was fired from the store and charged by police. While talking to him, apparently several customers texted him asking for marijuana.

Curtis Jefts, 22, of Malden was charged with possession of a Class D drug with intent to distribute and selling drugs in a school zone.

One shoplifter at the Rite Aid Store on Broadway got an unnecessary ride to jail last Sunday afternoon after getting caught and attacking police who were only trying to send her home without any charges.

Around 5:30 p.m., police were called to the scene for two juveniles who had shoplifted a bottle of Visine eye drops.

Store owners didn’t wish to press charges, but requested that relatives be contacted to retrieve the kids.

One of the shoplifters was released to a sister and the matter was over for her.

But the second shoplifter made a tizzy over the affair.

When she was about to be released to her mother, the 16-year-old began to get belligerent and apparently got into a store employee’s face and started threatening her.

The girl wouldn’t calm down punched two police officers and tried to bite them in an act of total savagery.

When her behavior was beyond control, officers decided to use their pepper spray.

That worked.

She was charged with shoplifting, assault, resisting arrest, giving a false name, being a disorderly person, threatening to commit a crime and two counts of assault and battery on a police officer.

A Melrose man was apprehended on Beach Street last Monday, Sept. 26th, around 8:45 a.m. after allegedly stealing a pack of cigarettes and making a run in a Saugus cab.

Police were called to a store at 315 Park Ave. for a robbery.

The employee told officers that the man had stolen a Snickers bar and a pack of cigarettes. The man had fled the scene in a Saugus Taxi.

The store clerk confirmed that the man in the taxi was the Snickers bandit, and police located Klonopin pills on the robber as well.

Robert Consolo, 29, of Melrose, was charged with shoplifting and illegal possession of a Class C drug.

A late night skateboarder on Shirley Avenue reported being beaten and robbed last Saturday night.

The man told police he was catching some righteous air on the hill at the top of Shirley Avenue when he was hit with a hard object as he passed Hichborn Street.

He toppled to the ground and two Hispanic males approached him.

The two men punched and kicked him while he lay on the ground, demanding his money.

He only had six bucks, but they helped themselves to it, and also nabbed the skateboard.

Police have few leads in the case and there were no witnesses.

A Revere woman was arrested on Foster Street for breaking into several motor vehicles and stealing sunglasses.

Not that one would need sunglasses with the crummy weather we’ve been having, but apparently the Yeamans Street robber saw a need for some shades.

Around 11:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 27th, police were dispatched to Foster Street where they found the woman standing next to an open motor vehicle. She had several items sticking out of her pockets in a suspicious manner.

She told police she was getting something out of her friend’s car, but that didn’t pan out.

Officers located the owner of the car and he told police that he owned much of the property in the robber’s pant pockets, including perfume and some sunglasses.

The items were returned to him.

Paul Cincotti, 48, of 10 Yeamans St, was charged with larceny of property over $250 and breaking and entering in the night with intent to commit a felony.

A father who was visiting his son on Cooledge Street last week and was accused of making his son and another youth fight, said that there was more to the story than reported in a police report.

The man told the Journal he never made the kids fight, but did tell them that they should stop ganging up on his son.

He said that the youths involved have terrorized his son over the past year, so much so that he has had to take the boy out of the Whelan School for bullying.

He maintained that his son is the victim of a family full of unsupervised youths.